


A Puff of Smoke

by SincerelyV



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, King is like one of those sad dogs that paws at the window when you go out, Teleportation, confused Luz, he does Not Like being left at home, questionable magic practices, stressed king
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25929370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SincerelyV/pseuds/SincerelyV
Summary: This one isn’t entirely his fault, if you ask King. Not in the slightest, actually. It isn’t his fault Luz decided to vanish in a puff of smoke.Literally.
Relationships: King & Luz Noceda
Comments: 5
Kudos: 56





	A Puff of Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> These two are best friends to the end and that's a hill I can and will die on.

Fundamentally, King is bad at keeping track of things. It’s a core piece of who he is as a demon. He acknowledges this, not out loud, granted, but he does acknowledge this.

Since moving in with Eda, he has lost not only his crown (lost, then subsequently found and brutally destroyed), Francois (turned up in the laundry a week later. The horrors he must have endured are unimaginable-), and, just now, an entire human teenager (yet to be recovered, but certain to turn up).

This one isn’t entirely his fault, if you ask King. Not in the slightest, actually. It isn’t his fault Luz decided to vanish in a puff of smoke. 

_Literally_.

One second, they were ready for bed, rolling out the sleeping bag and hunkering down like they do every night, the next, Luz is dropping the bag, brows furrowed, then _poof_ \- there was a thorough lack of Luz in the room. 

He sits by the door, contemplating running to find Eda and making her deal with it, when he remembers that it’s just them for the next few nights while Eda makes a delivery for an out of town customer. Or, _was_ just them. Now there’s just King. King and the empty air where Luz once stood.

Not good, he decides. Very much _not good_.

When the smoke settles- grey and thin like fog after a heavy downpour of boiling rain- he sees the sleeping bag, still sitting half unrolled where Luz had dropped it, and creeps toward it.

He sticks one tentative paw out to bat the edge of the fabric, shields his eyes. When nothing explodes, he peeks out between his fingers, sees nothing of note, and decides it must be safe to get closer to slowly unfurl it the rest of the way. 

Despite his wishes, everything is exactly as he expected it to be. Unrolling the bag reveals no hidden messages or a secret miniaturized Luz trapped inside. All he sees is bright blue fabric with a small indent where he usually curls up. Nothing that would suggest anything was wrong. Because there isn’t. Not yet. People disappear all the time, this is probably just another human thing, like sweating, or puberty. Luz would be back any second to laugh the whole incident off and go to bed. He's sure of it.

* * *

Ten minutes later and he isn’t so sure anymore. 

The bed is getting cold and Luz is still nowhere to be seen. The smart response would probably be to call Eda and let her know her apprentice had vanished in a puff of smoke. Assuming she believed him, also assuming he could reach her. Now that he thinks about it, King isn’t sure he knows how to manage either of those. Which is fine. Probably. Onto plan B.

Does he have a plan B?

Of course he does, he just has to think of it first. After that, it will all be smooth sailing. Easy peasy.

When nothing immediately comes to mind, he heads downstairs to look for a way to call Eda. Normally, she would enchant Hooty to send messages in case things went, in her words, _horribly wrong_. But her buyer had written her in a hurry and demanded she come as soon as possible, meaning there hadn’t been time to set up the spell.

Eda was a day out by foot- even longer by paw. By the time he managed to find her, explain what had happened, and got them both back (hopefully by staff, his feet wouldn’t stand for another day’s walk), they would have been gone nearly two days. King isn’t sure how long he has, but he knows two days is two too many. If he wants to do this, he has to do it now. 

But first, he has to figure out what _this_ is.

The smoke had crept in relatively quickly, without either of them managing to notice. What he knows: There was no smell and it left as quickly as it appeared. Now, Eda has made a number of enemies over the years, it’s one of the (many) drawbacks of living with her. King also knows that many of these enemies are relatively skilled in their fields, meaning that any number of them could be enacting their revenge plot right this second. 

A witch then, likely skilled in magic and, as they usually were, very, very upset.

What he doesn’t know: who said witch is or what it is they may want. Or if Luz is really involved or has just been pulled in from the sidelines by mistake.

King hurries back upstairs and finds Luz’s bag, awkwardly strapping it against his side. Its contents may not be of much use to King, but he knows Luz has started keeping predrawn spells on her, which could come in handy once he finds her. After, he takes Francois and carefully slips him in the bag as well with his head left to peak out the side. Just in case.

As King turns to leave, he pauses. He takes a moment to straighten out the now abandoned sleeping bag, he wants it to be ready when they get back from- wherever it is he may be headed. Because there is no way they aren’t sleeping for the next ten hours when this is over. With that settled, he starts toward the door.

Without a signal on Luz’s end, King has no real way of knowing where to go, so when he leaves, every step is going to be a guessing game to find the right way. He wishes Eda were here, she would know what spell had been used and exactly where to go or, at the very least, she would pretend to know. Or Luz. If Luz were here there would _be_ no problem, they would be _sleeping_ right now. And sleeping sounded so much better than death defying adventure.

Sighing, he glances back, only slightly considering curling back up, when the smoke returns. 

It creeps along the floor, inch by silent inch, same as the first time, narrowly missing King as he leaps up onto one of the shelves. A low rumble racks the house, knocking books and trinkets off the shelves and sending them plummeting to the floor with a series of resounding crashes. If Hooty feels the way the house shifts, he doesn’t bother to investigate. 

_Dumb owl_.

King, now left as the house’s final defender, presses further into the shelf to watch as a knelt figure takes form. They start from the ground up, smoke gathering in small, swirling whirlpools to create feet, followed by ankles, knees, hips, continuing upward to sit in the smoke, faced away from King.

The figure pushes itself to its knees with a shudder. Its head hangs, forming a creeping silhouette in the fog. The sound of its harsh breath fills the room.

As the figure struggles, King takes the distraction to slip out from the strap of Luz’s bag, push it close to the edge, whisper a quick apology to Francois, and let it fall to the floor with an unceremonious bang. As the figure jolts, King launches headfirst from the shelf to land directly on their shoulders.

“Out of my house, evil scum!”

He makes contact with a hefty _thump_ and, together, they crash to the floor in a heap. While they try to recover, he kicks at the figure with his heels, one after the other in a blind attempt to keep them down. Before he can get far, though, hands come up from behind to wrap around King's paws to pull him off as he scrambles for their eyes.

“ _King_ , what’s your problem?”

He freezes. Goes rigid in their grip. “Luz? Luz! You’re back!” He rolls away, suddenly feeling much less vicious as he sees Luz staring down at him, bewildered. “Wait, where did you go?”

As Luz sits up, she rubs her forehead and keeps her eyes tightly screwed shut against the light. 

“Ugh, remind me to never travel by spell again. Zero out of ten, worst experience of my life.”

Spell? As in witch? He was _right._ Except who-

_Oh._

Oh right. Eda.

She crawls over to bed, King following, then continues, “turns out the delivery was a scam, Eda pulled me in for back up, said she meant to bring both of us, but the spell went wrong. She’ll be back in the morning.”

Luz hunches over, one hand clamped over her mouth. Her face is green, something King is relatively certain humans aren’t supposed to be able to do. 

“Are you...okay?” King isn’t equipped to deal with human sickness, before Luz had used one of her colorful bandages to fix him up, but this time there aren’t any physical problems. Just that weird green look she sports and whatever is about to spew out of her mouth.

She swallows once, twice, breathes deeply through her nose.

“I just need to not be conscious right now,” she tells him once the green look has started to recede. She lurches again, this time slowly leaning back after to curl against her pillow. King follows suit, this time taking the spot near her head, instead of her feet.

Next to him, Luz turns over, one hand reaches to rest on his back and scratch softly. 

“Thanks for waiting up,” she says, only half awake. “Even if you attacked me, it means a lot.”

“Someone had to guard the place while you were slacking. Besides, it’s no fun being left out of the action.”

“Well, next time I get sucked up by a mysterious fog, I’ll make sure to take you with me. Deal?”

King curls closer, burrowing deeper into the blanket, “deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if there are any other forms of fast travel in the Boiling Isles beyond staffs. So have some hand wavey magic as to how the smoke teleportation works and why it's not commonly used.  
> My explanation is that it's incredibly difficult to summon someone to you without knowing exactly where they are at the time. Luckily Eda would have had a rough idea of where to find Luz in that moment, and so the spell worked on her, but because they weren't quite in bed yet, King got left behind. Poor King. :(  
> Drop by my Tumblr [@pastthebutterflies](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pastthebutterflies) or leave a comment if you wanna! I love hearing from you guys!


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